Statement by Ambassador WANG Min, Deputy Permanent Representative of the People's Republic of China to the UN at the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly On item 63(a) NEPAD: Progress in Implementation and International Support, and item 63(b), Causes of Conflicts in Africa and Promoting Lasting Peace and Sustainable Development

2013/10/25

Madam Chair,

China associates itself with the statement by Fiji on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

Peace and development in Africa have entered a new critical stage. With its booming economy, Africa has become one of the regions of the world with the fastest growth rate. United and resolute, the African countries have kept taking new steps to advance integration and sustain stability and development. Much headway has been made in the implementation of NEPAD, and the international status of Africa is rising. At the same time, however, as a result of such factors as the international financial crisis and the slow pace of global economic recovery, Africa is faced with a deteriorating external development environment. Regional conflicts and hot spots keep flaring up and humanitarian crises have become more serious, posing huge challenges to Africa’s efforts to seek peace, stability and development.

At the beginning of the 2nd decade of NEPAD, the international community should continue to increase attention to and engagement in Africa to achieve greater progress in the implementation of NEPAD, in order to promote Africa's stability and prosperity. Africa is an important member of the international community; its peace and security are closely linked to the interest and welfare of other members. Finding effective ways to help African countries tackle security challenges and realize durable peace and sustainable development is an important task of the international community. In this connection, China would like to make the following proposals:

First, all commitments to Africa should be honored. The international community should scale up assistance to Africa. Developed countries should follow through on their ODA commitments, deliver on their promise of assistance and debt relief, and help Africa in finance, technology and capacity building. Developing countries should help Africa through enhancing South-South cooperation, which offers a framework for them to share experience in poverty alleviation and development and supplement North-South cooperation, with a view to achieving common development. The international community should improve Africa's development environment and increase support to Africa in various aspects including finance, trade and debt relief.

Second, Africa should feature more prominently on the post-2015 development agenda. The international community should continue to help Africa in accelerating the attainment of the MDGs. At the same time, priority attention should be given to the special challenges and development needs of Africa in formulating the post-2015 development agenda to ensure that the new agenda would be in line with the priority areas of NEPAD, centered on poverty reduction and aimed at promoting overall development of Africa.

Third, the autonomy of the African countries should be respected. The international community should recognize the reality of Africa, respect the will of African countries, and support them in handling their affairs by themselves. At the same time, in carrying out economic and technical cooperation with Africa, we must fully take into account the specific situation of the African countries, accommodate their concerns and give them ample policy space in order to achieve mutually beneficial and win-win results and common development.

Fourth, African countries’ effort to realize peace and stability should be supported. In recent years have witnessed more pronounced instability and uncertainty in Africa, where regional hot spots keep flaring up and non-traditional security threats such as terrorism have grown. The international community should adhere to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and on the basis of full respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of African countries, make active efforts to promote peace and facilitate negotiations with a view to solving the relevant disputes by peaceful means. Moreover, it should strengthen coordination and collaboration with the AU and African sub-regional organizations, take concrete measures to help Africa reinforce it collective security mechanism and support the “settlement of African issues by the Africans in African ways”.

Madam Chair,

China and Africa have always been a community of shared destinies. Similar historical experience, identical development tasks, and shared strategic interests have bound us together. China-Africa relationship is characterized by sincerity, friendliness, mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit and common development. Since the establishment of the new China-Africa strategic partnership, we have deepened our relationship with African countries and regional organizations like the AU. China actively supports African integration and has steadily stepped up its support to NEPAD. In 2012, trade between China and Africa approached 200 billion USD, and over 1.5 million people traveled between our two sides. By 2012, China's accumulated direct investment in Africa exceeded 15 billion USD. This year marks the 50th anniversary of China's dispatch of medical teams to Africa. Over the past 50 years, China dispatched to Africa 18,000 medical personnel who checked and treated 250 million patients.

During his visit to Africa last March, President Xi Jinping elaborated on the tenet of China-Africa cooperation, which is "sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith", and announced a series of new initiatives to support Africa's development, which include providing a line of credit of 20 billion USD to Africa over 3 years, translating into reality the “partnership for the transnational and trans-regional infrastructure development” and implementing the "African Talent Plan". In the next 3 years, we will train for African countries 30,000 professionals in various fields, provide 18,000 scholarships to African students and scale up technology transfer to and experience sharing with Africa.

China is actively following up on the Initiative on China-Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Security and steadily increasing its constructive participation in the peace and security affairs of Africa in order to create conditions for Africa’s socio-economic development. China takes an active part in UN peace-keeping operations in Africa, and currently we have 1,400 troops in 6 UN peace-keeping missions on the continent. China has increased its support to African countries, the AU and African sub-regional organizations in their peace keeping capacity-building. We have also provided the AU with gratuitous military aid of 50 million RMB in support of African efforts to resolve the problems of the continent on its own.

Madam Chair,

China's development is inseparable from that of Africa and the world. China will always regard Africa as an all-weather friend. While 1.3 billion Chinese people are working to make the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation come true, over 1 billion African people are also trying to realize their dream of unity, self-reliance, development and prosperity. China is willing to join hands with the African countries in expanding and deepening cooperation in all areas, advance the China-Africa relationship in the direction of win-win cooperation, and ultimately achieve our shared aspiration.